


A Matter of Time

by jackingtonoff



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: M/M, Peterick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-07 10:07:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1118610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackingtonoff/pseuds/jackingtonoff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a clock, basically. A countdown providing the exact number of years, days, hours, minutes, and seconds until the person in whom the countdown is embedded meets his or her soul mate. Usually, it works out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> This entire fic is based on this tumblr post: http://jackingtonoff.tumblr.com/post/72101149599 definitely go check that out!  
> I'm expecting this to be either two or three parts, but I want to get this done as soon as possible. So look for the other parts soon and if I'm taking too long, definitely harass me about it at jackingtonoff.tumblr.com  
> I really hope you guys like it! Happy reading!

There’s really no good explanation for why they have them. By now, science has proven that nothing extraordinary would’ve happened through evolution had they not been born with them. Like, every race would still exist. Disorders and deformities would be present regardless. Red heads and people with green eyes would still be walking the Earth. But regardless, every single human in all parts of the world has this weird… thing imprinted somewhere on their body, raised just above the first layer of skin.

It’s a clock, basically. A countdown providing the exact number of years, days, hours, minutes, and seconds until the person in whom the countdown is embedded meets his or her soul mate. Usually, it works out. Two soul mates meet at sixteen or twenty five or fifty and when they do it’s all surprised gasps and fluttering stomachs and nervousness about just how to act, but also this undeniable _easiness_. Like this was meant to happen since the beginning of forever because well. It was.

At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to happen. But, hey, everything glitches. Sometimes people aren’t born with clocks which is, you know, heartbreaking, but most of the time those without are pretty content to go it alone anyways. (Or they meet up with other people who were born… clockless too, and that’s nice). Sometimes people die before they meet their soul mates and wow that’s. Even more heartbreaking. Especially since their soul mate will pretty much know right when it happens- the clock will stop and the numbers will vanish within about twenty-four hours and it’s kind of. Yeah. It’s not the nicest thing to think about.

And sometimes people decide to redefine destiny. To find someone themselves and go against their countdowns. Not just date somebody other than their soul mate- that happens all the time. It’s normal to date a bunch of other people before you hit zero hour, just so you know what to do, like, sexually and stuff before the time comes. But sometimes people actually marry someone who isn’t their soul mate, and that never ends well. They try and make it work but there’s always something that isn’t right. They don’t click exactly. And that’s why divorces happen.

That’s what happened to Pete’s parents. And that’s why he’s kind of promised himself that he’s going to stick to the whole soul mates thing. He loves fooling around with basically anything with a pulse while he’s got time, but he’ll definitely stop when the moment happens. After seeing his parents essentially break apart before his eyes, he seriously can’t wait to see true love firsthand, to fucking _experience_ real love. He’s totally got way too many tattoos to be thinking like this, but still. He keeps time.

He keeps time, but only now and then. He wants to know when it’s going to happen, but he doesn’t want to stress out about it. It’s going to happen, it’ll be amazing when it happens, but until then, he’s going to live his own life.

It’s funny, but because of its location sometimes he forgets it’s even there. It’s a weird one anyways. Just above the crotch and below the belly button, vertical, but tilted just to right. Gray numbers surrounded by a light green box, all raised mere millimeters off the skin. He feels the numbers at night, sometimes, in bed when he doesn’t feel like looking. But not all the time- because he doesn’t want to focus on it. He doesn’t. Plus, when the time comes, he thinks he’ll know. There’ll be roses and harps and angels and shit. He doesn’t need to keep time, not really.

But when he wakes up one morning to check (you know, because why not right?) and he sees that there are exactly two days, six hours, fifty-seven minutes, and thirty-two seconds….thirty-one….thirty….

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t grin like an idiot for the rest of the day.

\---

“So let me get this straight,” Pete half-laughs in between mouthfuls of the stale Cheetos he found hidden in Joe’s van. “Some dude actually took time outta his day to talk to _you_ about Neurosis? He’s definitely a weirdo.”

“Shut the fuck _up_ ,” Joe demands, hugging the sidewalk when he makes his next turn. He’s certainly not the best driver in the world, but he’s all Pete’s got. “He knew his shit. And he plays like eighty fucking instruments or whatever. We can use him for anything.”

“ _If_ he’s good,” Pete corrects him, sucking the cheese dust off of his fingers.

“He’s gonna be good,” Joe deadpans, eyes never leaving the road.

“You said these Cheetos were good.” Pete crunches up the bag and tosses it in the back seat. “I can’t really trust your opinion, Trohman.”

“You literally ate that whole bag!”

“It was more out of pity than anything else,” Pete insists, leaning back and propping his feet up on the dashboard. “I couldn’t just _leave_ them there.”

Joe’s phone buzzes with a text message, which he reads despite Pete’s high-pitched facetious whines of “ _don’t text and drive._ ”

Joe snorts and furrows his eyebrows as he reads over the message. “Dude, he wants to know if there are any girls in the band.”

“The Patrick kid?”

“Yeah.”

Pete rolls his eyes because he’s dealt with these types before. The young I-Wanna-Be-In-A-Band-For-The-Chicks types, and they’re always a pain in the ass. He’s seriously starting to dread Joe’s big mouth, and also their desperate need for band members. “Tell him I’m the sexiest girl in Illinois,” he grumbles.

Joe doesn’t, though. He slides his phone back into his pocket mumbling something like, “To be honest, in those fucking jeans you wear…”

The house looks normal enough when they pull up to it. It’s a standard suburban Midwestern home- clean lawn, white picket fence, frilly curtains, all that shit.

“Nice,” Joe comments like he’s trying to reassure Pete. Pete shrugs in his ‘let’s get this over with’ kind of way.

They knock, and they hear plenty of activity inside; lots of running around and organizing things. Pete smirks a little and whispers, “ _He’s hiding the bodies_ ” and Joe says, “Shut the fuck UP” and then.

The door swings open with force, so much so that Pete’s kind of surprised to see such a little man behind it. (Not little by his standards, about his size really but by normal-sized human standards, little). Pete loves him right away, though. It doesn’t matter why he wants to join the band. It doesn’t matter if he’s even good at playing music because the dude is wearing really tight shorts, black tube socks and a goddamn _Argyll sweater._ He’s absolutely amazing and honestly he’s locked in this band for life now. Pete’s not letting him leave.

It’s strange, though, because he doesn’t seem to be looking at them. His eyes dart behind the two of them as if he lost something precious in the street. Even when Joe greets him and shakes his hand, he seems a bit foggy and distant. And when Pete steps up to say hello he looks like he’s seen a fucking ghost. His eyebrows shoot up close to his hairline and his eyes squint in what looks like disbelief behind his thick black-rimmed glasses.

“Hey man, what’s going on?” Pete grins and extends a hand, trying to ignore his strange looks because again, he’s _awesome_ and is inevitably going to be part of his band.

“Patrick, this is Pete Wentz,” Joe offers. “Arma Angelus, Racetraitor, you name it he’s probably been in it and fucked it up majorly.”

Patrick finally accepts the handshake, but even then it’s tentative. He nods and that knocks him out of his weird trance, if only slightly. “Yeah,” he starts, clearing his throat. “Yeah I just thought… I was expecting…”

Pete feels himself pouting a little. He showered, didn’t he? He definitely brushed his teeth. And hey, his outfit today wasn’t _that_ bad. Undoubtedly it was a little bit better coordinated than Patrick’s.

“I. I thought you’d be taller,” Patrick finishes, finally smiling and even laughing a little. Pete can’t help but laugh in response.

It turns out that Joe was right because _wow_ can the kid play. Not only that, everything he plays is golden. He’s an insane drummer, but he’s great at guitar too. He says he can play “some piano and a little trumpet” but he actually turns out to be a mastermind at both. Pete and Joe know they need him more than he needs them, but they just don’t know _what_ he should play. Luckily, he opens his mouth to sing just a few bars of a Saves the Day song, and the two almost snap their necks when they turn to look at each other in disbelief. Patrick’s their voice, there’s no question.

They make Patrick sing the rest of the album for them, just because. And Pete can’t get enough of that voice. He’s hit the jackpot, he thinks. He’s finally done something right. (Well, technically Joe did something right, but that’s not the point).

They laugh with him and quote a few ‘80s movies with him and it just so happens that Patrick is the absolute best. Pete’s got an incredible feeling about this band, and he tells them so. They discuss possible drummers, and Joe brings up Andy Hurley, who is also perfect. Pete doesn’t know any drummer from the scene that’s even half as good as Andy Hurley is, not even untouchable, seamless, Yeah-I-Mean-I-Guess-I-Can-Play-Every-Instrument-Ever Patrick Stump.

It’s like everything’s falling into place. All of it checks out, and all of it makes sense. Pete loves the feeling of not fucking things up.

They’re just about to leave for the night when Pete excuses himself to the bathroom. He goes through all the motions in a blissed out blur, but when he scratches lazily just below his belly button he feels something undeniably different.

He rushes to the mirror and boosts himself onto his tip toes, lifting the bottom of his shirt to get the best possible look at his countdown.

He blinks. He cups his hands full of cold water and splashes it onto his face. He looks again. His mouth dries up completely. His fingers tremble as he outlines the shape of each raised little zero near his hipbone. It had happened, and he never knew. There were no angels.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s a clock, basically. A countdown providing the exact number of years, days, hours, minutes, and seconds until the person in whom the countdown is embedded meets his or her soul mate. Usually, it works out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for waiting for this!! Sorry setting times for regular updates kind of sucks with my schedule, but I promise I won't leave this hanging!!

But how could he have _missed_ it? Pete wonders, still staring mystified at the reflection of his own skin, his countdown now forever frozen on five perfectly round zeroes. He didn’t feel anything. His body didn’t notify him. He can’t recall a single instance where he looked at somebody and time stopped around him, where a beam of light seemed to shine just behind the head of the person in his line of sight. Not a single rose. No signs. And the other person didn’t even-

The other person. Pete backs himself against the wall and slides down to a childlike crouch on the floor. Who could it have been? Who had he interacted with in the last day? Or, was it two days? Fuck, he can’t think. He can’t _think._

His hand shakes and his bottom lip might tremble a bit but there’s no one around to prove that. He pushes the pads of his fingers into his eyes and focuses hard to recall everyone he’s interacted with in the last few days. Okay….okay….

Yesterday he was kind of a homebody- he woke up at five; his mom made him some casserole and yelled at him for sleeping in so late again. He ate, he messed around on bass for a while, and he watched some old Wonder Years episodes before he passed out. So, alright, he was safe for that day.

The day before that he spent a few hours trying to convince a school counselor that yeah, he was absolutely sure that he didn’t want to go finish his last semester at DePaul so could they please stop calling and sending him shit? Thanks. She wasn’t exactly thrilled, but that was beside the point. Anyways, it definitely couldn’t have been her because her countdown was clearly visible- it ran just along her collarbone. She had a few weeks left to go. Pete mentally sighs in relief, because he really can’t imagine himself waking up to that frog face and baditude every morning. Yikes.

After he left campus he went through the drive-thru at McDonald’s. And, oh god, the woman who served him there couldn’t have been his person because she was like seventy-five and very extremely wrinkly and also seemingly half-comatose so. Pete feels pretty secure about that one.

The rest of that day was uneventful for the most part. He went home and wrote and then slept and then woke up and erased everything he wrote before- it was a standard routine. Oh, except he did decide to go for a walk at about ten at night and he met a _really_ sweet dog but. He’s almost positive that only humans have countdowns. At least, he hopes so. Oh shit.

He shakes the thought out of his mind. Who did he see today? Okay, Joe picked him up from his house at about three, and he hadn’t seen anybody before then. There’s approximately a 0.00% chance of Joe being his soul mate though, because Joe has like a good five years left on his clock (it wraps around his left ankle- Pete takes a look every time he decides to wear his favorite seriously grotesque pair of short shorts). Besides, Pete’s known Joe for years. His countdown would’ve stopped much earlier.

So there’s only one person left to consider. And when he realizes this, he sits up with a start. Of _course_. Of fucking course. 

His mind flashes through images of bad fashion sense and musical precision. Of faces of concentration and resonances of dorky laughter. He pictures a future filled with pale bare skin and spot-on Harry Caray impressions and. Pink lips. Floppy hair that might be thinning just a little bit. Soft curves and big glasses. A voice like he’s never heard.

It’s not a bad future- not a bad one at all. He can’t help the smile that spreads across his face.

But Patrick didn’t react. He didn’t hurdle towards Pete at lightning speed with the fantastic news of their impending life together. He didn’t even blush a little. Pete worries. 

Maybe he didn’t know? Maybe his countdown was in some weird place, like his inner elbow or the bottom of his foot or, like, his dick. Pete shivers- only slightly. 

He should make the first move, he decides after much internal deliberation. But, he thinks, grinning in an almost giddy way, he’ll make it totally clear that in the future _he_ kind of likes being the one pushed around. Hopefully Patrick’ll understand. But he has to, right? That’s the beauty of this thing.

He doesn’t have time for thoughts like these- he doesn’t even have time to _breathe_. He pulls himself up and rushes out the door to tell him. Something. He hasn’t figured out exactly what he’s going to say but-

He turns the corner and smashes right into Patrick, nearly succeeding in knocking the two of them over.

“Ah, _shit_ , man,” Patrick grumbles, rubbing his forehead in anguish. But Pete doesn’t feel any pain. Knowing that his soul mate, his _person_ is right in front of him is too exhilarating. It’s terrifying but it’s. Wow, it’s electric. His skin is buzzing from pore to pore and it’s unlike anything he’s ever experienced, it’s. It’s…It must be evident all over his face, because Patrick’s looking at him like he just sprouted three extra heads.

“Are you okay?” He asks cautiously, about to take a step back. “Should I get Joe, or…?”

This is the moment Pete will play back in his mind for years to come, the moment that will make him want to hide under six thousand blankets and cringe for the rest of eternity. Because maybe if he hadn’t acted like such an idiot, maybe if he had approached this smoother, acted like more of an adult, things would’ve turned out differently. Or at least, maybe he would’ve gotten a better explanation for the events that followed.

But the point is that Pete doesn’t take time to think these things out, because all of the stories say that this is just supposed to _work_. Your soul mate is supposed to understand you and back you. That’s what they all claim, anyway.

Pete bounces on his heels and starts with a suave, “So, like” that gets Patrick to cock a curious eyebrow but he finishes with “ _I think we’re_ ” and a rapid pointing motion traveling between the two of them.

Patrick takes the step back. His eyebrows pinch together- kissing, almost. But that’s all. Pete’s caught off guard by the sheer lack of emotion in his face. His jawline is tight, his mouth even. His eyes frustratingly blank. He stares at the space between Pete’s eyes and insists, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He turns and walks away. “See you at practice, man,” is the only other thing he says, his voice littered with hints of…nothing spectacular at all.

Pete stands still until Joe comes and collects him.

\---

Some of the many replies Joe yells in response to Pete’s recounting of this event are as follows: 

“Oh _fuck_ no. No fucking way. Absolutely not. Nope. _Noooo_ wa—“

“Alright, jesus.” Pete is equal parts uncomfortable and annoyed. He chooses to stare out the window at the old tar and litter in favor of Joe’s disapproving face.

“It’s wrong, dude. It has to be. The clock is wrong.”

“You know it’s never fucking wrong.”

“It’s gotta be because there’s no chance that your _junk_ is ruining this band for me.”

“Seriously, there IS no chance of that happening,” Pete half-screams in aggravation. “That’s the fucking problem. Did you listen to any of what I just said?”

Joe sighs, tugging at his hair as they speed across the highway. They sit in silence for a while, Pete hoping that Joe is crafting some kind of explanation. Some solution as to why Pete’s life mate seems unfazed by his existence.

He sighs again. “I don’t know. Maybe, like, there was a mix up?”

Pete whips his head around at breakneck speed, lips almost numb as he says it. “A mix up?”

Joe sniffs in consideration. “Yeah, as in, I mean you could’ve been assigned him or whatever but he could’ve been assigned another person who died a long time ago? Or maybe he didn’t get a clock at all or something. I think I saw that on Oprah one time.”

Pete thinks about that for a while. He imagines Patrick looking at his countdown one day, seeing large numbers fade into perfectly disappointing zeroes right before his eyes. He wonders if he cried. He conceives that he’s so broken up about his person being gone that he rejects the idea of ever having a clock in the first place.

And then he sees the other possibility. Patrick being born, his parents rejoicing at their new son. The nurses and doctors searching for his faint countdown, his birthmark of sorts. He pictures their dismay at having to let Patrick’s parents down. He imagines Patrick searching himself in his early childhood and into his teens for his mark. He envisions the hell puberty must have been for Patrick, hearing everyone talk about how exciting meeting their soul mate would be, watching people _meet_ their soul mates.

Both options are equally horrifying. Pete kind of wants to die a little.

He finally pipes up, “How did that Oprah episode end?”

Joe almost smirks as he pulls into the exit. “For Patrick’s guy? Alright. He was kind of happy to be alone anyway. He wrote, he had cats. But for your guy?”

Pete nods.

“Not great.”

“Figured.”

There’s still a while to Pete’s house after they get off the highway. Pete rests his head against the car door for a really long time, and maybe it’s because he thinks Pete’s asleep, but for whatever reason Joe says, “Look, the thing about Pete Wentz is that he can get out of anything.” (Pete grins here, in spite of himself). “You’ll figure out how to deal with this.”

Pete doesn't respond because he’s not so sure. But Joe seems to be. And Joe’s a pretty respectable kid, honestly, except for the fact that he drives like a fucking maniac.

“But just to reiterate,” Joe deadpans, louder now. “Your dick isn’t fucking up my band.”

Pete smiles into the van’s interior again. “Point taken.”

He lets Joe’s words swim around in his head as he climbs into bed. He chooses that memory over Patrick’s expressionless stare and dull words. It’s the only way he can rest easy. He’ll find a way, he thinks. He has to.


End file.
